Many computer-based applications exist for aiding in the design of products. Using these applications, an engineer can construct a computer model of a particular product and can analyze the behavior of the product through various analysis techniques. Further, certain analytical tools have been developed that enable engineers to evaluate and test multiple design configurations of a product. While these analytical tools may include internal optimization algorithms to provide this functionality, these tools generally represent only domain specific designs. Therefore, while product design variations can be tested and subsequently optimized, these design variations are typically optimized with respect to only a single requirement within a specific domain.
Finite element analysis (FEA) applications may fall into this domain specific category. With FEA applications, an engineer can test various product designs against requirements relating to stress and strain, vibration response, modal frequencies, and stability. Because the optimizing algorithms included in these FEA applications can optimize design parameters only with respect to a single requirement, however, multiple design requirements must be transformed into a single function for optimization. For example, in FEA analysis, one objective may be to parameterize a product design such that stress and strain are minimized. Because the FEA software cannot optimize both stress and strain simultaneously, the stress and strain design requirements may be transformed into a ratio of stress to strain (i.e., the modulus of elasticity). In the analysis, this ratio becomes the goal function to be optimized.
Several drawbacks result from this approach. For example, because more than one output requirement is transformed into a single goal function, the underlying relationships and interactions between the design parameters and the response of the product system are hidden from the design engineer. Further, based on this approach, engineers may be unable to optimize their designs according to competing requirements.
Thus, there is a need for modeling and analysis applications that can establish heuristic models between design inputs and outputs, subject to defined constraints, and optimize the inputs such that the probability of compliance of multiple competing outputs is maximized. There is also a need for applications that can explain the causal relationship between design inputs and outputs. Further, there is a need for applications that can collect desired patterns of design inputs to reduce computational load required by the optimization.
Certain applications have been developed that attempt to optimize design inputs based on multiple competing outputs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,617 (“the '617 patent”) issued to Waldon et al. on Jul. 11, 2000, describes an optimization design system that includes a directed heuristic search (DHS). The DHS directs a design optimization process that implements a user's selections and directions. The DHS also directs the order and directions in which the search for an optimal design is conducted and how the search sequences through potential design solutions.
While the optimization design system of the '617 patent may provide a multi-disciplinary solution for product design optimization, this system has several shortcomings. The efficiency of this system is hindered by the need to pass through slow simulation tools in order to generate each new model result. Further, there is no knowledge in the system model of how variation in the input parameters relates to variation in the output parameters. The system of the '617 patent provides only single point solutions, which may be inadequate especially where a single point optimum may be unstable when subject to variability introduced by a manufacturing process or other sources. Further; the system of the '617 patent is limited in the number of dimensions that can be simultaneously optimized and searched.
Methods and systems consistent with certain features of the disclosed systems are directed to solving one or more of the problems set forth above.